


Ratline

by htebazytook



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Blood, Blood Kink, Breathplay, Canon-Typical Violence, Dom/sub Undertones, First Time, M/M, Murder, Murder Husbands, On the Run, Post-Fall (Hannibal), Post-Season/Series 03, Road Trips, Slash, Slow Burn, Smut, Violence, did i mention murder husbands, murder as foreplay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-11
Updated: 2018-09-06
Packaged: 2019-07-07 20:48:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 15,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15915969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/htebazytook/pseuds/htebazytook
Summary: Obligatory post-fall murder husbands on the run epic.  Will is in survival mode and the line between lust and bloodlust is starting to blur.





	1. Water Birth

**Author's Note:**

> I am forever indebted to my fanfiction wing woman, [windfallswest](https://archiveofourown.org/users/windfallswest/pseuds/windfallswest), for inspiring a good amount of this and for introducing me to this fandom in the first place!

The most important aspect is the blackness. It isn’t limited to Will’s vision - there is blackness to the taste in his mouth and a blackness in the pain that envelops him. Black, black pressure from every direction that slams him into pits of further blackness. It must be waves, but it feels like big soggy punching bags pounding him to a pulp. The initial impact had knocked the breath out of Will and deafened him, or at least he hadn’t been able to hear anything since. So much of his body hurts that none of it hurts, like very cold water that begins to feel hot as your limbs gradually freeze. In fact Will isn’t too sure that that isn’t exactly what is happening.

When sound does come it is unbelievably loud, like white noise if white noise was jagged. He’s still so dizzy and suffocated that he genuinely believes he’s in outer space for a minute. Then he catches a glimpse of something pale and flopping in the water - a fish, he thinks, before recognizing his numbed arm bobbing up and down in front of him.

His eyes are adjusting now. It’s the ocean - he knew that, he must’ve known that - and a cloudy night sky that makes it hard to differentiate up from down. 

He can’t breathe all the way. Breathing too deeply invites an army of daggers into his chest. But it’s the only sensation he’s experiencing so the variety of pain is comforting.

“Oh, shit,” Will says, because waves don’t crash in the middle of the ocean like that. They crash into things. He wills his senseless limbs to maneuver him around. In fact, waves crash into cliffs that would’ve been the darlings of Romantic era painters the world over. There they are. Absolutely beautiful. He’s gotta get to them.

It takes what feels like hours to reach the nearest rocky outcropping, and it’s unhelpfully slippery after the struggle it took to get there. Will digs his unfeeling fingers into the slimy stuff coating the rock until he can get a grip on it, sort of. He half floats, half lays on it, feeling like Leonardo DiCaprio but suspecting he won’t freeze to death nearly as glamorously. Maybe he’ll drown first. Or bleed out. There’s blood in the water, black as the rest of things. Will thinks it’s wrong, though. Something’s wrong about it. Blood from his face and shoulder is only a trickle and it’s being carried in the other direction . . . this blood is coming toward him with the current.

Will braces himself against the rock and pushes off as hard as he can. It’s getting easier and easier to ignore the alarming tightness in his chest. He tastes metal as he swims up the trail of blood. 

Poseidon must sense how tired Will is because before long the current delivers a body to him just like everybody always does. A slightly lighter blackness floating in the water. Hannibal in a bloody shirt. Hannibal is dead. And that was the plan all along, wasn’t it? It might’ve been. Why else do you throw somebody off a cliff?

Hannibal coughs. It’s like watching a tenuous newborn take his first breath. Will tows Hannibal back to the rocks, half convinced he’d hallucinated the cough and the entire exercise is pointless.

Will wedges Hannibal or Hannibal’s corpse or whatever it is between a slanted boulder and Will’s rock. He just needs to close his eyes for a minute. He just needs a second to rest and figure this out . . .

“Will. Will.” Somebody is jostling Will’s shoulder. “Have to keep moving.”

Will can’t make sense of Hannibal’s words so he just states redundantly, “You’re still alive.”

“For now,” Hannibal says.

“Let’s just rest a minute.”

Hannibal hits him, a swift sting across Will’s cheek - the lacerated one. “Wake up. We have to keep moving. The current will take us north - that way. Will?”

“Yeah. I’m good, I’m awake.”

“This will take hours, and we might not survive it.”

Will starts to laugh and regrets it immediately. He clutches his chest and nods. “What else is new?”

They use the current to guide them from rock to rock along the coast, sometimes having to swim for long stretches and constantly bumping into things underwater. The choppy waves are like so many obsidian arrowheads. They take turns in the lead. First Hannibal swims while Will clings onto him; then Will drags Hannibal through the water and keeps them both afloat. Nobody talks about the blood seeping into the ocean. In fact their teeth chatter too violently to allow for much talking, at all.

When the moon comes out again it gives them another shred of light to see by and a better sense of time. When dawn arrives - when it _breaks_ across the horizon as suddenly as the word suggests - Will expects a revelation. Instead there’s a colorized version of the same landscape that had surrounded Hannibal’s seaside retreat: low scattered pines and tall yellow grasses garnishing the cliffs.

It’s so misty that Will doesn’t see the boat at first. He’s still half-convinced it’s a mirage until they’re close enough to hear the cast of a fishing rod. Heavy orange sunlight glints off the hull like it’s beckoning them.

The fisherman is balding, maybe near retirement age. He’s leaning on the edge of the taffrail with the rod propped beside him, drinking contentedly from an enormous thermos. He doesn’t spot Will and Hannibal until they’re a couple of yards away. He says something - curses, Will guesses - and hurries to throw a lifebuoy to them. The boat, the man, and the sky are saturated with the dawn like an old photograph.

“Man, you guys look like hell,” the fisherman says as he helps first Will and then Hannibal onboard. Hannibal collapses onto a nearby crate and hunches over. “Jesus Christ. How long you been out here?”

Will uses the rope attached to the buoy to strangle him. The fisherman gets in a decent blow to Will’s skull with his coffee thermos (which smells heavenly before it tips overboard) but is soon only batting weakly at Will as he suffocates. Will glances automatically to Hannibal and finds him watching, although he seems too exhausted to be exhilarated. It’s the first good look Will’s got of Hannibal in hours, and Hannibal does indeed look like hell. 

The fisherman finally slumps onto the deck, and Will follows his example. Maybe he shouldn’t have done that. What if he’s gotten himself a concussion now on top of everything else?

There seems little to say to each other about what has just transpired, so Will changes the subject to something more practical: “What are the odds of surviving a jump from that height?”

“Not good. It’s not unlike the odds of surviving a gunshot to the head.”

Try as he might, Will can’t make himself feel surprise about the miraculousness of it. One in a million circumstances hound their every move. 

“Rib fractures and internal bleeding are the greatest risks,” Hannibal says.

“Do you think you have any internal bleeding?”

Hannibal’s eyes have glazed. 

“Hannibal.”

“I’m here. I’m here.”

Will helps him to his feet and guides him into the boat’s tiny cabin. Hannibal sinks to the dirty floor while Will goes in search of a first aid kit. The one Will finds is only coated in sea scum on the outside and is well stocked. He allows himself sigh of relief.

Will crouches beside Hannibal and unscrews the lid of an enormous bottle of painkillers “Hannibal.” Hannibal’s eyelids are drooping; Will shakes him awake. “Hannibal! How many of these can we take?”

Hannibal reaches awkwardly for the bottle. He doles out a number of pills that seems suspect to Will, but then again what’s the worst that could happen? They’ve gambled with death plenty of times tonight and their system has worked so far.

They peel off their sodden clothes and Hannibal hangs them up while Will untangles blankets from a musty cupboard under the berth. They dry off and patch each other up as much as possible. Hannibal changes into the fisherman’s roomy flannel and jeans; Will makes do with the man’s T-shirt and the change of boxers he’d found in a gym bag. It’s impossible for both of them to fit in the berth so they move the mattress to the floor and lie on it sideways, piling blankets on top of themselves and waiting for the shivers wracking their bodies to subside. 

Any visible wounds from their battle with the Dragon pale in comparison to whatever horrible things have happened to their insides upon impact with the water. All Will knows is that it hurts to breathe - even the beating of his heart hurts. He thinks Dolarhyde’s missed the major arteries with that clever knife of his, but then again he hasn’t got a fucking clue about that. At least Hannibal’s gunshot wound has an exit.

“If only we were Nazis,” Hannibal says, slurring to the point that Will thinks he’s speaking another language at first. Will hopes it’s the drugs and not the blood he’s lost to the ocean. “Perhaps the Vatican would help us to escape to Argentina . . .”

It’s so quiet here compared to the ceaseless sounds of swimming, their harsh breathing and the waves. Will closes his eyes to revel in the muffling effect of the mattress and the layers of fabric cocooning them. “I think we’re probably worse than Nazis. They tried to make killing into a clinical, emotionless business. It’s a little different for us, don’t you think?”

“Quite right.” Hannibal’s voice is lazy. “They had a cause that they followed mindlessly. Their actions were senseless in every meaning of the word. What you and I do is transcendent.” 

The humidity of the air hadn’t been on Will’s radar when they’d been in the water, but now it is stifling. Biting gusts of wind that sneak into the cabin do nothing to lessen it. It seems to attach itself to the goldenrod light slanting in from the sunrise. Will shifts closer to Hannibal under the blankets. “Would you say that the Nazis were products of their environment?”

“Yes and no.”

“So what does that say about me? Or you. Or the Dragon, for that matter . . . ”

Hannibal doesn’t seem interested in answering that, but Will is sure he has his theories. “If you want a better example of political environment producing a killer, I would direct you to Andrei Chikatilo.” 

“I worked for the F.B.I.,” Will says. “I hardly need a refresher.”

“Fair enough.” Hannibal’s breathing is becoming labored from the effort of talking, but at least the pockets of space between them are beginning to warm. “So I assume you are aware of his successor.”

“What do you mean?”

“A young man inspired by Chikatilo, and in competition with him. The Soviet idea of masculinity and fidelity to government warped them both in disparate ways. He lured vulnerable people with the promise of vodka into the woods and beat them to death. Occasionally, with the very bottle they had shared.”

Will is dozing now. It’s a comfort to listen to Hannibal’s voice without having to mentally brace himself. Like old times. “He was a Pied Vodka Piper.”

“Not quite. He was known by the moniker ‘The Chessboard Killer’ because he aspired to kill a person for every square on a chessboard.”

“You think we oughta pick up a Monopoly board and start keeping score?”

Hannibal laughs a little dreamily. “Monopoly . . . do not pass at Go, isn’t it?”

“What’s his name?”

“Alexander Yuryevich Pichushkin.”

“Gesundheit.”

Hannibal laughs again. “To your wishes.” 

Will hasn’t had time to be afraid so far, but Hannibal’s listless cadences makes him feel very urgently (and entirely selfishly) that he doesn’t want Hannibal to die. What if he _actually_ dies? It seems too anticlimactic for Hannibal to let it happen. Will tries to shift closer to him but his slashed up shoulder protests. He pulls Hannibal in by his flannel instead and damp salty hair brushes against Will’s lips. Will makes it a kiss to Hannibal’s forehead before ducking down to Hannibal’s level to find his mouth.

Will has been half delirious since he’d plunged into the Atlantic; now, whatever mental space had remained is usurped by the warmth and relief of physical closeness. His eyes are closed and he’s living in a distant red place behind the eyelids where thought is reduced to the languid motion of lips. He’s wondered about this for too long to fully register if it’s reality.

Hannibal makes a soft, un-Hannibal-like sound and inhales sharply through his nose. It’s as inexorable as everything else with Hannibal is. The heat of his mouth is like manna, but the tang of salt is mildly nauseating after being so intimate with it in the water.

Hannibal cups Will’s face carefully around the bandage on Will’s cheek - the touch of fingertips and the heel of Hannibal’s hand are separated by gauze and it feels good, like itching around a mosquito bite without scratching at the source. Hannibal pulls back and when Will opens his eyes in confusion Hannibal is frowning at his hand. Then Hannibal bends to lick an errant smear of blood from Will’s jaw.

Will chases him to taste it off his tongue and it’s strange to call this kissing; it feels very different to Will. It’s very warm and red and sleepy. Will pauses with his mouth barely brushing Hannibal’s until the scratch of Hannibal’s lightly stubbled chin reminds him to kiss back. A predictable, almost chaste press of lips and breath that melt away as Will loses track of consciousness.


	2. Double Event

The sun is low in the sky when Hannibal emerges from the cabin and joins Will on the cramped flying bridge. “Good morning, Will. Or afternoon, I suppose,” Hannibal says, sitting beside him. “I see you haven’t bled out yet.”

“There’s still time.” Will has guided the boat far enough away from the coastline to keep them relatively hidden from prying eyes, but there seems to be more and more civilization visible the farther north they sail. It’s March, but it’s not as bone-chilling when you’re not nearly drowning in the middle of the night. In daylight under a warm sun the cool breeze and occasional sea spray are refreshing. “If I wasn’t covered in bruises I’d think it was just a dream. Not quite as surreal as encephalitic dreams, but still vivid. And disturbing.”

Hannibal nods. “Understandable.” He looks like Hannibal, today. He doesn’t look half-dead and disoriented, although that flannel is comically oversized. “Do you find that killing the fisherman feels like a dream, as well? It was certainly symbolic enough to be one.”

“Huh. I hadn’t thought about it like that.” He had.

“So, Will. Is there a plan?”

“You’re asking me because . . . ?“

“You know I am always willing to take credit where credit is due, but it wasn’t my idea to hurl us off a cliff. I think it’s reasonable to assume you had a plan for what came next.”

Will can’t explain why he’d done it. Just that he had needed to shatter and reset everything between them. The whole damn china cabinet of their lives. It had been little more than a coin flip. “You’re the doctor. How long can we survive like this?”

“That reminds me.” Hannibal fishes the bottle of painkillers out of his breast pocket and gives some to Will. Will takes them, grimacing at their chalky residue on the way down. He doesn’t think they’re going to make a dent in the pain in his chest which has only grown more intolerable since he’d woken up around noon.

Will turns to hand the bottle back and discovers that Hannibal is still uncharacteristically haggard around the eyes. “You didn’t answer my question. If we came into your E.R. like this, what would you think?”

Hannibal maintains a stubborn poker face for a couple of seconds before sighing and admitting, ”I would think, ‘Thank God you’ve made it here.’ “

“So. We need a hospital.”

“Yes.”

“But we can’t go to a hospital.”

“That is also true.”

“Great. Well, a burial at sea has never appealed to me, so we should probably dock soon. I think I saw a flare, so a Viking funeral isn’t totally out of the question either.”

“Not the worst way to go,” Hannibal says, then adds with open disdain: “Certainly an improvement over plunging to our deaths à la Sir Conan Doyle . . . “

“I didn’t think the disembowelment was much fun either.”

“Ah, well, we will have to agree to disagree on that.”

Will stands up and stretches carefully. It hurts like a motherfucker, everything does, but the endorphins are worth it. He can see the fisherman’s pale naked corpse out of the corner of his eye from this vantage point. “What do we do about old what’s-his-name?”

Hannibal stands as well and turns his head to look. “Your ring probably left an indentation when you strangled him. If we dock nearby and leave the body onboard, that forensic detail along with the proximity to my house would make us easy to track. We should wash away as much evidence as possible, give him the Viking funeral you’ve alluded to, and let the boat drift out to sea.”

Will reaches out to pull Hannibal’s collar aside. He traces the faint finger-shaped bruises on his neck. “The Dragon changed you a little bit after all, didn’t he?”

Hannibal swivels his head back to face him, creating an incidental caress.

*

Will didn’t think it was possible for anything to be worse than their moonlit swim the night before, but without the benefit of shock their swim in to shore is doubly painful. They’re wearing life jackets and the water isn’t as cold, but Will’s chest feels like a bag of knives jostling around with every stroke. The sun sets uneventfully behind cloud cover. 

The beach is probably well-traveled in the summer months, but now it’s empty of even the most foolhardy of off season surfers. They lie exhausted in the sand for a couple of minutes among crispy dried seaweed and sand crabs before burying the lifejackets high up in the dunes and trudging through them to the road. They follow it in silence except for the squelch of soggy shoes.

The sound of surf has just begun to fade when Hannibal stops at a bend in the road. He looks around and so does Will - it’s impossible to see more than twenty yards in either direction before the road curves away. “This will do,” Hannibal says.

Will unshoulders the fisherman’s waterlogged gym bag and retrieves a zip-locked cell phone. He dials.

“ _Clutter County 911, what’s the address of your emergency?_ ”

“I dunno, I dunno,” Will says, panting. “I-I’m by the beach. This car just came outta nowhere and hit me and he just took off, the guy practically ran me over! Oh God, oh shit I think I’m bleeding, oh _shit_ . . . ”

The sound of typing on the other line. “Okay, sir, I need you to stay calm and stay on the phone. An ambulance is on the way.”

Will ends the call. He rushes over to help Hannibal finish untangling the rope. One of the nails perforating it nicks the back of Will’s hand. Will ignores it but Hannibal catches him by the wrist and inspects the cut. The sudden contact catches Will off guard. “I don’t think it was rusty,” he says.

“Still,” Hannibal says, releasing him. “Be sure to clean it when the ambulance arrives.”

They each take hold of one end of the rope and stretch it across the road. There are mostly nails sticking out of it, but there are a couple of fishing hooks that Will was able to straighten out with pliers, too. Will crouches behind the guardrail riding a fresh wave of adrenaline. His heart beats painfully in his chest.

The closest streetlight is just around the bend, but it’s rosé glow doesn’t reach them. Hannibal is barely visible from his hiding place in the leafless brush except for the whites of his eyes. 

The ambulance’s shadow heralds its arrival. Its lights are flashing frantically but there’s no siren. Both of the front tires and one of the back ones blow out when it speeds over their improvised spike strip and Will is surprised that it’s actually worked. He lets go and Hannibal reels it into the darkness on his side of the road.

A male and female EMT hop out of the ambulance after it fishtails to a stop. They lead Will into the back of the truck.

In the ambulance, Will feels guilty for not feeling guilty about their impending death. The truth is, the EMTs are annoyed at having been called out tonight for some idiot who’d wandered onto the road and got himself hit. It didn’t help that they now had three flat tires and it would take them even longer to finish their shifts. They’re no doting Florence Nightingale’s, and Will is glad about that because it makes this easier.

The man cuts Will’s shirt with a pair of dull-edged scissors to reveal his shoulder wound, and Will could swear he takes a mean pleasure in ruining his clothes. The woman cleans and bandages it while he tends to the hole in Will’s cheek. She pokes at Will’s bruised torso and surmises he’s broken a rib or two, which sounds like a wild understatement.

There’s movement in the darkness beyond the ambulance’s fluorescent interior. The door swings open and Hannibal loops the nail-studded rope around the man’s neck from behind, forcing him to his feet. 

The woman screams. Will pushes past her to retrieve a fire extinguisher and land a blow to her head. She collapses easily to the floor in a daze.

Hannibal has fallen back against the wall in his own struggle, but the man is beginning to slacken now. Will walks closer. It hits him that he’s never seen Hannibal uninhibited in the act of killing, which seems impossible. Hannibal’s face isn’t impassive or guarded - a vein bulges at his temple and when he notices Will his eyes darken, fey and heated. Will can’t look away. 

Hannibal’s hands are bleeding from the hooks and nails protruding from the rope. Will covers them with his own and squeezes. Hannibal’s breath catches. The man being choked to death is barely even real.

A groan from the other end of the ambulance breaks the spell and they both look to see the woman struggling to stand up. Hannibal snaps the man’s neck without preamble.

Will is closest, so he picks up the scissors from a shelf and moves toward - 

Hannibal catches Will’s shoulders from behind to stop him. “Wait. That much blood will attract unwanted attention more quickly. Let me.” He walks over to her, getting her in a headlock and cutting off her airway; her arms flail only briefly before she’s unconscious.

“It’s a little rude not to let me finish what I started, don’t you think?”

Hannibal feigns surprise. “My apologies, Will.” He lets go of her and steps back. “Is she your type?” he asks, an edge of bitterness in his tone.

“Do you think this is sexual for me?” Will asks.

“You’re not an erotophonophile.”

“So what’s your diagnosis?”

Pondering this thoughtfully probably isn’t advisable with a living victim still in play, but Hannibal takes his time to consider. “I’ve thought about it quite a lot. I don’t believe an accurate label exists for you. Or for me.” 

“Sounds like something a psychopath _would_ say.” Will moves closer. “You’re an old hat at this, right? Show me how to snap her neck.”

Hannibal’s lips part unconsciously and Will can’t deny how powerful that makes him feel. “Come here.”

Hannibal props the woman’s limp body into a sitting position. He ushers Will behind her and guides Will’s hands onto either side of her head.

Hannibal clears his throat. “On the count of three, jerk hard to the right. Are you ready?”

Will nods. He’s pretty sure Hannibal doesn’t need to keep his hands fastened over Will’s for this, but says nothing. Will snaps her neck with a flurry of pops. Hannibal’s hands slip away.

Hannibal takes advantage of the available packs of blood to give them both transfusions before cleaning the gunshot wound in his side. It’s only then that he begins having trouble staying stoic. “Find some more painkillers while I do this,” he says. “Then I will need your help.”

“We’re going to need something less conspicuous to wear. Ill-fitting wet clothes and paramedics’ uniforms aren’t great options,” Will says, hoping to distract Hannibal from the pain as he rummages through the trashed ambulance for pills. “And anyway, I’m guessing neither of us can fit into hers.”

“I usually go to the airport. One can obtain plenty of clothes as well as other necessities from the baggage claim, with the added bonus of an airport sighting suggesting we might have flown internationally . . . is something funny, Will?”

“Just that you have an established M.O. for getting supplies when on the lam.”

Hannibal smirks a little. “First, however, I suggest we drive the ambulance back to the hospital where it will not arouse much suspicion. Perhaps I can obtain some more drugs from the pharmacy while you find us a more suitable mode of transport.”

“You want me to steal a car.”

“I believe that’s what I just said. But right now, I want you to stitch this entry wound.”

It’s lucky for Hannibal that Will is used to detailed work on a small scale like this. Stitching the torn skin of Hannibal’s back is easy enough to execute, but Will is conscious of Hannibal’s clenched hands and deliberate breathing.

“About the bodies,” Will says, hoping to distract him again. “It’s not worth trying to dispose of them elsewhere because there’s no disguising the evidence of foul play. And anyway, the ambulance dispatch will be keeping tabs. The best course of action would be to pick up some bleach to douse everything with and leave them in here when we get to the hospital.”

Will can hear the smile in Hannibal’s voice when he replies: “I knew you’d be good at this.”

After Hannibal stitches up the exit wound they change - Hannibal into the male EMT’s uniform and Will into the uncomfortably damp flannel and jeans Hannibal had been wearing. They find a half empty Mountain Dew, Swedish Fish, and a granola bar in the cab and eat it all. It’s the first time it’s occurred to Will that he is absolutely starving, and the food only whets his appetite.

It’s a very unsettling ride in the off-kilter ambulance, and is accompanied by a near constant scrape of metal against the road from the deflated tires. Will drives and Hannibal closes his eyes in the passenger seat, neither bothering with a seatbelt. The GPS takes them on a convoluted tour of the pine barrens for about half an hour before they get to a highway. Signs for Brighton Hospital are everywhere so Will follows them instead of trying to pay attention to the irritatingly soothing voice of the GPS. When they arrive Will finds the hospital parking lot more occupied than he would like. 

Will weaves around to avoid troupes of people in scrubs and wayward patients. “Should I drop you off at the E.R. entrance?” 

No reply. He looks over and sees that Hannibal is out cold. Will shakes his shoulder, feeling oddly like he’s violating him. Hannibal’s eyes drift open. “Are we here?” he asks groggily.

“We’re here. You wanna rest a little more, or - ?”

“No.” Hannibal sits up. “No, it’s best to do this quickly. There should be an area sectioned off for ambulances - park there.”

Hannibal waits to enter the hospital with an influx of employees from a shuttle bus. Will spends some time in the back of the ambulance with the bleach they’d bought at a Wawa with the female EMT’s crumpled up cash. He’d been worried about finding a single unlocked car in the massive hospital parking lot, but he finds at least a dozen of them with ease. He selects a Dodge with a full tank of gas and drives it back to the E.R. entrance to wait for Hannibal, parked within sight of the abandoned ambulance with its grisly cargo.

Hannibal reemerges soon after and they’re on the road again. He’s absconded with more pill bottles than Will would’ve thought was feasible in that uniform, but more importantly he’s brought two paper cups of horrible vending machine coffee with him. Will has been craving some since he’d got a whiff of the fisherman’s and it tastes downright gourmet to his malnourished palate.

*

“How about the one from Charlotte?”

“No, international is preferable. Worth waiting for, in fact. Tourists especially will have foreign currency that we can exchange here for our own use.”

“Oh. Okay.” Will takes his eyes off the flight schedule display to look at him. “Good idea.”

Hannibal is fairly pleased with himself, too. “Mm.”

Will looks back at the display. “There’s one from Frankfurt in two hours.”

“Wunderbar.”

Hannibal insists on only taking black suitcases from the baggage claim. While he’s doing this, Will raids a janitor’s closet for an Out of Order sign which he fits across the entrance to a bathroom. Hannibal is already inside, gutting the suitcases as methodically as carcasses. He sets aside hair gel, razors, and shaving cream.

Will picks up the miniature Barbasol can. “I assume this is for me.”

“You assume rightly.” Hannibal strokes the back of a finger along Will’s bearded cheek. “Off it comes.”

There are a lot of dirty clothes to contend with, but Hannibal manages to put together an outfit for Will while he shaves carefully around the gash in his cheek that’s finally starting to scab. The pants are tighter than Will would’ve liked, but the thermal is soft and luxurious after enduring wet clothes for so long. 

Hannibal unscrews the cap on the hair gel and coats his hands with it. “Face the mirror, Will.”

“What?”

“Go on.”

Will acquiesces. Hannibal isn’t much taller than him, but Will can still see his forehead peeking over Will’s in the mirror. Hannibal’s fingers slice through Will’s hair a little too hard, tearing through sea-starched knots without heeding Will’s gasp. “Just relax,” Hannibal tells him.

“You’re hurting me.”

“I know. But I’ve done worse, haven’t I? And still you keep coming back.”

Well, there’s no denying that, anymore. Hannibal turns Will’s head here and there, combing his fingers through his hair with ease now and sculpting it back and to the side, parting it where it doesn’t want to be parted. Will feels caged in by him.

“Never thought I’d have my very own stylist,” Will says, reaching for casual and immediately betrayed by his wobbly voice. He clears his throat and examines himself in the mirror. “So, how do I look? En vogue enough for you?”

“That’s not the word I’d use,” Hannibal says, perfectly composed.

Will senses the potential of the moment, but forces himself to raise his eyebrows and ask, “So were you planning to change too, or . . . ?”

Hannibal retrieves a somewhat wrinkled suit from the pile of clothes. It’s not as tailored or stylish as Hannibal is accustomed to, but it’s close enough for Will to protest: “Oh no you don’t. No way. That’s as good as legally changing your last name to ‘the Cannibal’.”

Will plunders the depths of the suitcases and forces Hannibal into a red, white, and blue football jersey and baggy jean shorts.

Hannibal takes in the effect in the mirror. “These don’t fit,” he says mildly. He’s pissed.

“You’re an all-American sportsfan. They’re not supposed to.”

“Still, this is ridiculous.” The erectness of his posture is particularly incongruous with this ensemble.

Will snickers. “I know.”

“And you’re enjoying it.”

Will shrugs. “And isn’t that what you always wanted for me?”

In the end Hannibal keeps the clothes without further protest. They exchange the euros in the suitcases to US currency, walk back to the stolen Dodge with their luggage, and leave.


	3. Cooling Off Period

They drive until dark and sleep in the car off the side of the highway. Hannibal lies down in the back and Will adjusts the front seat until it’s as horizontal as possible, then wonders why he’d even bothered - he could’ve fallen asleep on a pile of rubble.

Will awakens with the sun. They’ve parked in a winter-barren field. The land is flat in every direction and the sky is only just remembering to transition from watery yellow to watery blue. Highway sounds are infrequent this early in the morning and Will soaks in tranquility. Frost spreads unevenly over the windshield and clings to the crispy blonde stalks surrounding the car. Will is chilly under two thin airplane blankets, and the hunger he had begun to recognize the day before is gnawing at him now. In the backseat, Hannibal breathes shallowly in his sleep. Will sees no reason to wake him yet.

The slow haziness of early morning is contemplative, and Will figures it’s about time he did some contemplating. He knows he has made more reckless choices in the past 48 hours than he has made in his whole life put together. He knows the list of people he’s betrayed is appalling. Logically there must be guilt about Molly - his _wife_ , for God’s sake - and Walter. Jack. Not to mention the betrayal of his principles, his moral code, his oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies, his _life_ . . .

But Will is too exhausted by caring to care anymore - his mind has been more battered by a lifetime of it than his body had been battered by the sea. He’s too exhausted to deny that seeing Hannibal again in the BSHCI had clogged Will’s mind with him in exactly the way Hannibal must have envisioned it would. Instantly, inevitably. 

Why does the desire to right ‘wrongs’ against Hannibal stick stubbornly at the forefront of Will’s mind and make him do crazy things like careen willingly off of cliffs with him? Hannibal - the man who had manipulated and decimated Will over and over again - to balance out all the good of all the others in his life? Really?

There’s movement in the backseat. Hannibal sits up and catches Will’s eye in the rearview mirror. He’s enveloped by an enormous red puffer jacket obtained from the suitcases and should look like an idiot, but he’s as infuriatingly poised as ever. “I think we’re doing well so far, all things considered.”

“We have yet to be apprehended,” Will concedes. “Growing body count notwithstanding . . . ”

“Killing was much less of a hassle when the Chesapeake Ripper remained anonymous,” Hannibal says wistfully.

“Yes. You were hidden away in an urban murder castle doing God knows what away from prying eyes, like Elizabeth Báthory herself. They should’ve called you the Blood Count.”

Hannibal chuckles at that.

“What?”

“I do hold the title of Count, as it happens”

“Of course you do.”

“Shall I drive, today?”

“Be my guest.” Will’s wounded shoulder aches from the stiff position he’d had to keep it in while driving. He reaches over to turn the key in the ignition while Hannibal gets into the driver’s seat. Will puts the heat on full blast.

The air is only lukewarm by the time they’ve gotten up to 65 on the highway. “Next time, it would be better to steal a different car,” Hannibal says.

“A better _car_ , you mean. A _luxury_ car.”

“And why not?”

He has a point; they might as well be comfortable for their great escape. And the notion of hijacking a Mercedes holds a certain karmic appeal. “We should probably head for the border.”

“Being in the country is not ideal,” Hannibal agrees.

“North or south?”

Hannibal waits until he’s passed a tractor-trailer to answer. “I have a proposal about that, actually, if you would tell me your thoughts. Leaving the country is expected, and the F.B.I. will certainly be prepared for such an eventuality. That is, if - ”

“If anyone realizes we weren’t swallowed by the Atlantic like a pair of ortolan buntings.”

“Yes. And if anyone has realized this, I would rather be safe than sorry. The Canadian border is less than a day’s drive from here. We can leave evidence of our survival on a primary route to it, obtain a new car, and immediately double back to drive south. We might do the same near the Mexican border, too, and continue heading west after that.”

Will considers. “It’s always hard to recognize patterns across different jurisdictions - it could take months for one to emerge, and longer still before the F.B.I. is made aware,” he says. “And by ‘evidence’, you mean . . . “

Hannibal shoots Will an amused and knowing look. “Do I have to spell it out for you, Will? Even now?”

“You don’t have to _not_ spell it out for me. I’m not wearing a metaphorical wire anymore. Scout’s honor.”

“Murder. Homicide. Whatever you want to call it. I rather enjoyed your so-called ‘Copycat Murders’ - I thought we might add to that collection together.”

“You want to conceal the Copycat Murderer . . . with additional copycat murders?”

Hannibal shakes his head. “These would be imitations of other serial killers’ work in order to further obscure their connection. Each could be attributed to an individual copycat murderer, if local law enforcement happen to bother looking hard enough.”

It sounds reasonable, but Will can read between the lines: “Also, you think that would be fun.”

“Would you rather it be a chore?”

Will knows full well that dropping bodies isn’t necessary; that leaving evidence would’ve been sufficient to give the F.B.I. some wild goose chases to follow in their wake. He knows they’re just making excuses for bloodletting now, and he thinks Hannibal is equally aware of it. 

“In the meantime, however, we should eat.”

Will’s stomach growls. “Tell me about it.”

*

Snow flurries swirl around the car as they pick their way farther west. It’s like driving through a snowglobe. By the time they pull over at a rest stop outside of Pittsburgh it’s undeniably _snowing_. Hannibal parks beyond the semis and out of sight of the general population. A trucker gives them a cursory glance as he parks but other than that they are undisturbed. Hannibal takes a handful of smaller bills and change and heads for an outlying vending machine.

When Hannibal returns his arms are full and Will has to get out to open the door for him.

“Well, well, well. What do we have here?” Will asks once they’re in the car.

Hannibal deposits his bounty on the dashboard. “Oat and apple cakes served with potatoes in a mesquite glaze, fried until golden and crisp. And for dessert, we have fingers of flaked butter in a chocolate sauce.”

“You should be on ‘Chopped’.”

The food is absolute bliss to Will’s empty stomach, but there’s not nearly enough to satiate his hunger. It doesn’t help that a garish Popeyes logo on the main rest stop building is as good as a siren song. Big fat snowflakes dot the windshield of the car and melt prettily before washing away. The snowfall is getting heavier, but Will feels cozy and content to observe it.

A sleek black car materializes from snow-clouded air and parks in the outskirts of the parking lot. The driver heads into the rest stop. It’s a Bentley, and Will and Hannibal exchange glances.

“It’s broad daylight,” Hannibal points out, not an objection.

“We have to get a new car at some point.” Will looks around. “Visibility isn’t the best right now.”

“All right.”

“But I want to do it. Not here. We’ll take him and the car and kill him closer to the border.”

“And whose work will you be honoring, with him?”

Will hasn’t thought that far ahead - his mind races with possibilities until: “Maybe it’s time to mark off the first square on our chessboard.”

Hannibal nods. “Then I will help you to claim your Rook. But we’ll have to move quickly.”

Will scrambles to fit as much as possible into the biggest suitcase. He walks gingerly across the layer of new snow on the tarmac to the Bentley and hides himself behind the car. Hannibal pretends to smoke near an abandoned picnic table and waits for the driver.

Will’s knees are starting to ache by the time he hears footsteps approaching. He glimpses brown loafers and Hannibal’s stolen tennis shoes underneath the car.

There’s a gasp.

“Do exactly as I say,” Hannibal says under his breath. “We’re going to drive to your bank and you’re going to make a large cash withdrawal, and you will live to tell the tale. Simple, isn’t it?”

A thud that shakes the car followed by a pained grunt.

“And don’t think about shouting for help. This gun has a silencer, and I can’t see more than a few feet in any direction, can you? Unlock the car.”

It unlocks. Will ducks into the backseat with the suitcase while Hannibal forces the driver inside and into the passenger seat. The doors lock again and Will seizes the driver’s neck from behind. Hannibal lunges over to hold him still. Tendons flex and strain in Will’s grip, cold on the surface of his skin but warmer the deeper Will’s fingers dig into flesh.

“That’s enough, Will,” Hannibal says once the driver’s stopped struggling.

Will finally gets a look at him - 20-something, well-dressed, dirty blonde and breathing shallowly. His life is worth more than Will and Hannibal’s need for a car. Will knows that somewhere deep down. Hannibal uses a syringe he’d obtained from the hospital to inject the driver with a solution of crushed up painkillers.

Hannibal avoids toll roads as they head north through the snowstorm, as much to conserve cash as for stealth. Night approaches prematurely this time of year and soon they can see little more than the snow caught in the Bentley’s headlights. The seats heat with the touch of a button, even in the back, and Will sighs into the leather’s warm embrace. It feels like Hannibal’s car, and it’s easy to forget the sacrifice strapped into the front seat.

The exit says Meadville. They drive past the primary cluster of fast food and gas stations and find a lonely Exxon near the woods. An SUV with _You're in Steelers Country_ emblazoned on the bumper leaves as they pull up, but other than that the place is deserted. They park on the edge of a poorly lit parking lot, well out of sight of the gas station’s windows.

Hannibal empties the driver’s pockets and relieves him of his Patek Philippe. “Pichushkin killed with blunt force trauma to the back of his head. Liquor isn’t sold outside of state stores in Pennsylvania, so that’s about as close to imitating him as we’re able to get, at the moment, unless you’ve a flask of vodka hidden about your person?”

“You know very well that I can’t fit a quarter in the pockets of this pants.”

“Certainly not; it would disrupt the silhouette.”

Hannibal finds a brick beside an icy dumpster. They lug the driver into a patch of woods behind the gas station. Everybody’s clothes catch on errant branches along the way and the nighttime chill penetrates Will’s flimsy layers with ease. After crunching through dead underbrush for a few minutes they dump the driver in a clearing.

“Well?” Hannibal says. He’s only a shadow facing him in the dark, and Will’s eyes struggle to adjust. 

“Well what?”

“You said you wanted to kill him.” A gesture to the body between them on the ground, and Hannibal steps back obligingly.

It feels all wrong when it’s not in the moment, when their freedom isn’t being somehow threatened by a person’s survival. The driver hasn’t done anything but own a nice car.

“We can’t afford to leave any witnesses,” Hannibal points out.

“I know, I know.”

“This was your idea.”

“Let’s be honest, Hannibal: most of my decisions are only half my own idea.”

Hannibal doesn’t respond to that. “I can kill him, if you wish.”

The driver twitches on the ground. That’s a little better. Hooking a dead fish isn’t anything to be proud of.

“Now,” Hannibal says more forcefully. “Do it now.”

His voice spurs Will into action. Will straddles the driver, knees sinking into snow. He fits his hands over his neck automatically, feeling a certain poetry in finishing what he’d started earlier in the car. The pressure wakes the driver and his eyes bulge with fear - he claws desperately at Will’s hands with more energy than Will had expected. Will grits his teeth and tries to bear it.

Snow crunches as Hannibal falls to his knees as well. He wrenches the driver’s hands up over his head and pins them. Hannibal’s face is finally visible to Will in the darkness - his grin glows like a Cheshire Cat’s. 

“You are developing quite the M.O., Will,” Hannibal says, hair shading his eyes.

Will is breathless with effort. Probably effort. “Maybe don’t say my name to the live victim, _Hannibal_.”

“Better kill him, then.”

The driver is unconscious again, and they turn him over together. At first Will looks away as Hannibal bludgeons him in the head with the brick, but the sound of Hannibal’s grunts draws Will back in. Hannibal’s arm is flecked with blood, and there’s a sheen of sweat across his brow. The next blow coats his neck with red, bright against the black and white background.

Will reaches out to touch it compulsively - hot violent liquid and Hannibal’s hot skin beneath it.

“Careful,” Hannibal says, “or you may stain the shirt.”

Will smears the blood down across Hannibal’s shirt defiantly and Hannibal’s mouth quirks up. He catches Will’s wrist and brings his hand up to lick the blood away. An electric charge jolts from Will’s scalp to groin to toes at the softness of Hannibal’s tongue and the tease of his breath.

“What about the body?” Will asks, not knowing what else to say.

Hannibal releases Will’s wrist and steps back. “Leave it. That’s the point.”

Hannibal cleans up and changes in the gas station’s separate bathroom. It’s Will’s turn to drive, and he can’t avoid the temptation of fast food any longer. They stop at a McDonald’s where Will makes sure the cashier sees his face before leaving Meadville. Even Hannibal is hungry enough to devour his McDouble and large fry. They share some gloriously deep fried chicken nuggets between them as they head south on the highway.

“Are you regretting the events of today?” Hannibal asks.

“If you mean killing - ” Will doesn’t even know the driver’s name. “ - if you mean killing him, then no. I don’t think so, anyway.”

“You hesitated, before he regained consciousness.”

Will shrugs. “It feels unfair, somehow. And unchallenging.”

“You would prefer a live one.”

“I guess the fisherman isn’t as symbolically dead as you thought, eh?” Will is silent for a moment. “I feel free. It’s horrible, but embracing the horribleness is why it’s so freeing.”

“You’re tired of fighting it.”

_No, I’m tired of fighting you._


	4. Asphyxia

In the morning they redress each other’s wounds in silence, down a couple of pills, and continue on as if they aren’t still alive by accident. Will can’t tell if the pain in his chest is dulling because of the drugs or if he’s just so used to it that it no longer registers.

They’ve stopped somewhere in western Kentucky. Hannibal had insisted on shopping at an actual grocery store and Will’s growling stomach had forced him to relent. They’d parked the Bentley in the abandoned back lot of an ancient strip mall and Hannibal had left for the nearby Kroger on foot. Will has been forcing himself to stretch his legs outside while he waits. Yesterday’s precipitation hadn’t quite turned into snow here, and the parking lot is a mess of mud and gravel. It’s still undeniably winter, though. 

Two hours have passed by the time a car appears. It’s a dull blue Ford Focus with a woman behind the wheel and Hannibal pressing something to her throat from the backseat. Will watches from the hood of the Bentley as they park.

The doors open and Will can hear Hannibal saying something but can’t make out the words. The woman exits the car unsteadily, keys tumbling into a puddle. She’s dark haired and wide-eyed, and Hannibal slips out of the backseat to slice her throat open with a shard of glass before she even knows what’s happening. It’s not just similar to the way he’d killed Abigail; it’s an exact copy. 

Her body collapses and Hannibal looks to him. He lets the bloody glass fall almost casually. 

The question hurdles out of Will’s mouth: “Why her?”

“Her shopping cart was full, and the quality of her purchases was better than most. They’ll afford us some decent meals for the next week or so.”

“You hunted her,” Will observes. “Properly - for food.” 

“To be fair, that has always been a driving factor in my kills.”

Will watches as her blood seeps through the gravel, tinging the puddle that had taken her keys a richer brown. “Did she say anything? Was she scared?”

Hannibal looks more closely at him. “I don’t think you’d like the answer.”

Will approaches them, Hannibal and the cooling corpse. “What’s her name?”

“Does it matter?”

It matters to someone.

Hannibal crouches by the body. He unzips her coat and pulls her shirt up to expose her stomach.

“What are you doing?”

“If I am correct about her diet and lifestyle, her liver will make a decent pâté.”

“Care to be any more obvious for law enforcement? It’s your only _signature_.”

“As well as Jack the Ripper’s. And we’ve already slit her throat.”

“You did that,” Will corrects him.

“You’re right; you only watched me without interfering. They call that ‘accessory to murder’ in your line of work, I believe.”

Will can’t argue with that. “Okay, but isn’t Jack the Ripper a little - excuse the pun - done to death?”

“It’s an oldie but a goodie.”

So Hannibal harvests the anonymous woman’s liver while Will loads their few worldly possessions into her Focus. Hannibal had been right about the groceries; the trunk is packed with fresh produce. Will notices a bushel of grapes and plucks off a sprig to snack on. He lays the stem in the woman’s open palm when he’s done - unsubstantiated or not, it’ll always be a detail that smacks of Saucy Jacky.

Hannibal’s hands and forearms are stained with blood, and the coppery smell of it is sharp even after he’s wiped the worst of it off. They add the woman’s cash to their pool and drive a couple of towns farther south and west to find a hotel for the night. There’s a Quality Inn with three tour buses parked out front, so they book a cheap double room and try to fade into the crowd.

Hannibal constructs an admirable dinner from the woman’s organs and groceries using only the hotel room’s microwave. They eat it at a chintzy table by the window. 

“Why her?” Hannibal asks once they’ve finished eating. It wouldn’t do to have spoiled the meal.

Will says nothing. 

“Is it because of her gender?”

Will sighs. “I don’t know. I can’t explain it. One of the EMT’s was a woman.”

“Because I killed her in the same way as Abigail Hobbs, then?”

Will holds his breath a minute, then blows it out in an effort to untangle his brain. “Probably. Of all the things you’ve done, that’s the one I’ve never quite forgiven you for. And you’ve done a _lot_.”

“You know I don’t feel repentant about killing her, but I do regret the effect of her death. On you as well as on me.”

Will is tired. The fatigue of nearly constant travel is weighing him down even when morality won’t. They’re far enough from D.C. that he’s begun to feel a false sense of security. Unfortunately, without the instinct for survival lodged at the forefront of his mind he’s also begun to grasp the magnitude of all that they’ve done together. Half-assed suicide, fucking his former life to hell, serial murder . . .

Will can’t. It’s been a week since he slept in a real bed; a week since he’s been able to stretch out comfortably and actually relax. “I can’t think right now. I’m gonna go to sleep.” 

“Will - ”

“I _don’t_ want to talk.” Hannibal is starting to annoy him. Maybe Will should throw them off another cliff to restore harmony in their relationship. Will heads for the bed, intent on its starchy covers.

Hannibal grabs him by the shoulders, _traps_ him. “I do.”

Will laughs bitterly. “What’re you gonna do? Kill me? That’s awfully passé by now, don’t you think?”

“She had to die. Do you want to be caught by leaving witnesses?”

Will is silent.

“I had hoped we were past this, but you are retreating again. As you said before, the horror of your actions is what makes them so freeing. If you embrace that, you can convert the power of your revulsion into a power under your own control.”

“This isn’t a therapy session.”

“I was never your therapist.” Hannibal still hasn’t removed his hands.

“So what were you? What _are_ you?”

“You tell me.”

“Really? That’s the strategy you’re going with? Haven’t I proven that you can be authentic with me, yet? We’ve killed people together.”

Hannibal backs Will into the wall and holds him there. “We’ve killed people together,” he agrees. “But you only enjoy it when you have your hands around somebody’s throat.”

Just the image makes Will’s pulse quicken.

“Will.”

“Yes.”

“Guilt doesn’t even factor into it as long as you can squeeze the life out of them yourself. As long as you can feel life leave their body at your behest, you will take pleasure in it.”

“Yes.”

“Do it to me.”

Will has to clear his throat. “Excuse me?”

“Although I’d appreciate it if you didn’t follow all the way through.” There’s delight in Hannibal’s eyes, curiosity and heat. Will remembers a time when he couldn’t meet them. Now he can’t look away.

“Duly noted.” Will leans forward and kisses him.

It’s not at all like the dreamy kisses they’d fallen into on the floor of the boat. Hannibal is solid and reactive and real. One hand moves from Will’s shoulder to his hair and tilts his head. What began as a tentative slide of lips veers satisfyingly deeper. Will licks into Hannibal’s mouth and wants to melt when Hannibal sucks his tongue and twists his fingers in Will’s hair. Will can feel Hannibal hardening against his thigh so he presses into it and gets a low groan in response.

Will pushes Hannibal back and discovers him looking unbalanced and maybe even needy. Will shoves again until Hannibal is sitting on the edge of a bed. He parts Hannibal’s legs to move in close. Hannibal’s breathing is audible as he strains his neck to look up at him, waiting for a cue. His features are crisp and familiar, healing cuts adorning his face. The smell of blood still lingering beneath his own unmistakable scent.

Will fits his fingers over the yellowish indentations of the Dragon’s and Hannibal winces - he must be a little tender, still.

“You want me,” Will says, accusatory.

Hannibal swallows and Will feels it intimately. “I want you in every possible way.”

“How about wanting me dead?”

Hannibal’s teeth flash. “Sometimes. But you are certainly familiar with that desire, yourself. Will you make it a reality, now?”

Will’s hands squeeze Hannibal’s throat in response. Is it fear or arousal in his eyes? Will rarely thinks of him as vulnerable, and certainly Hannibal could’ve freed himself if he’d wanted to, but the sense of control over him is no less exhilarating for it. Maybe Hannibal’s willingness is what makes it so exhilarating, to begin with. Always so composed and confident, but he’s enthralled by desire now and if this is the only way Will can get a reaction out of him then he’ll take it. 

“Touch yourself,” Will says, half-convinced Hannibal is just going to scoff.

Hannibal stares up at him. Will’s thumb strokes over a tendon before he digs his fingers in harder. Hannibal tries to gasp but it’s smothered in his throat. The jangle of Hannibal’s belt is shaky as he opens his pants and his cock springs free, leaking and stiff. Hannibal’s hand grips the base and he strokes upward briskly, his sigh vibrating through Will’s fingertips.

If Will didn’t know better he’d call the way Hannibal is looking at him beseeching. His face is flushed appealingly, upturned and exposed and just for him. Will relishes the feeling of muscle contracting in his grip.

Will’s voice comes out at a growl: “Do you want to breathe?”

Hannibal’s eyelids droop and he nods. 

“You used to be so big on manners, Hannibal. What happened?”

“Please,” he manages.

Will’s hands drop to Hannibal’s shoulders to press him backwards onto the bed. Will follows, straddling him and crushing their mouths together to capture Hannibal’s gasping breath. They drift disjointedly up the mattress. Hot, seeking kisses and Hannibal’s hands stealing under Will’s shirt to claw at his back. Hannibal’s leg curls around Will’s calf and brings their hips and bodies flush. Their hearts are beating so fast. Will grinds down and hisses at the fierce pleasure it releases. 

Hannibal’s hands clutch at Will’s hips and grip them punishingly as he thrusts back. It’s a messy, uncoordinated affair and is completely delicious. Will finds the marks he’d left on Hannibal’s neck with his mouth and sucks hard. He’s rewarded with his name gone ragged in Hannibal’s scratchy voice. 

Will’s cock strains uncomfortably in his clothes but he’s too turned on to think about removing them. He thrusts harder into the taught muscle of Hannibal’s thigh, against the thick jut of his cock into Will’s hip and stomach. Hannibal’s leg twines tighter around Will’s as he stills and comes shudderingly between them. Will shifts up onto his forearms to see it, traces up Hannibal’s throat to his wet mouth and unseeing eyes and thinks it’s as close to killing him as he’s going to get. That thought along with another heavy thrust is enough to get Will off too.


	5. Biblical Knowledge

They hit traffic near Memphis and are delayed by an accident for hours, but other than that it’s an unremarkable trip. Hannibal tunes into local classical music stations for most of it, although he doesn’t protest when Will changes over to the news when the reception goes fuzzy. There’s never any mention of them, and the urgency for escape diminishes.

The monotony of travel gives Will some more headspace to process. Guilt has faded in tempo with the changing landscape until he feels like a different person as they bisect the breadbasket. Different as they veer away from the Rockies and south into endless desert. Infused with that otherness is a delicate sense of déjà vu; he’s been to a lot of these places before when consulting on cases, but he’s never ventured very far into the southwest. It feels like an alien planet.

Maybe he’s always been a borderline personality. All Will can understand right now is that he’s being carried by a current of renewal toward some remorseless version of himself that he doesn’t know. He’s never felt much at home in his own skin, but the one he’s been fashioning with Hannibal fits scarily well.

They’re just entering the Land of Enchantment and the third movement of a Brahms symphony when Will wonders aloud: “Why did you start killing, anyway?”

Hannibal’s lounges in the passenger seat, elbow resting casually against the door. Bruises peek above the collar of his shirt and give Will a thrill every time he glimpses them. “Destroying surrogates for my sister’s killers would be the typical explanation. Witnessing death at a young age is often traumatizing.”

“Often,” Will repeats, wondering if he’d even expected a less evasive answer. “Of course, one could argue that homicide is a natural evolution when subjected to D.C. area traffic . . . ”

Hannibal smirks. “I have to say that I prefer your sense of humor when it’s uninhibited.”

“You prefer me to be _amoral_ ,” Will translates. “Like you.”

“Not exactly.” Hannibal turns the radio down as the music swells. “I merely enjoy coaxing the amoral elements of your character out of you.”

As far as Will can tell, there have only ever been two schools of thought: that people are good at their core, or that they’re evil. Falling from a cliff had been the impetus, but Will had followed the path laid out for him afterward without much real hesitation. And a taste for it has settled solidly into his body now - exactly like it has with every monster he’s ever profiled. And Will _knows_ it’s horrible. _Knows_ that giving in to the desire to kill actively destroys people’s lives, but the draw of the release is too strong now. He _wants_ to ride the momentum he’s set loose into the pool of visceral pleasure that awaits him at its end. He wants to join Hannibal in that place, as Bonnie and Clyde as it gets, because the simple fact is it feels really fucking good. Not to mention that the path back to decency is no longer accessible to him.

“Which serial killer would you say you’re the most like?” Will asks. “Ed Gein was a rumored cannibal . . . “

Hannibal wrinkles his nose. “I wouldn’t say I’m like Gein at all. I have the furthest thing from a Oedipal Complex.”

“Right. So what kind of complex _do_ you have?”

Hannibal shrugs. “I’d like to hear your theories.”

“Antisocial personality disorder? A hell of a God complex?”

Hannibal smiles faintly.

“We should kill another one, soon.” Will is itching for it.

“It’s a good idea to change cars, yes.”

“That too.”

It’s late when they arrive in Las Cruces, a warm and breezy night and Will finally feels like he’s thawed out from their swan dive into the ocean. He rolls the windows of the Focus down and breathes in the foreign bouquet of the desert. Buildings are low and tend toward adobe, and in the distance an enormous purple mountain looms watchfully. Taco Bell’s and traffic lights and other vehicles are neon in the darkness. A New Mexico Bank & Trust clock proclaims 10:10 PM in a slightly calmer white.

There’s a bar up ahead with a retracted garage door for a wall and people spilling onto the street with their drinks. As Will approaches he notices a display of the beers on tap, the flag in the window, and the exclusively male clientele. He pulls over.

Hannibal follows Will’s gaze to the bar but says nothing. A truck roars past and douses them with exhaust.

“Have you heard of Bible John?” Will asks.

“The name rings a bell.”

“Three women were murdered in Scotland in the ‘60’s. They were abducted from ballrooms, raped, strangled, and dumped like garbage. Totally naked. Apparently most of them were menstruating, and the killer felt compelled to adorn their bodies with tampons and pads. They were trash to him - something to be discarded and degraded, even in death. Witnesses indicated that a man quoting scripture with unsettling intensity had interacted with the women prior to their deaths. Hence, ‘Bible John’. He was never apprehended.”

“The best of them never are.”

“And yet you were.”

Hannibal changes the subject: “Taking the current venue into account, there are aspects of his crimes that can be emulated with a man.”

“Worried I’ll chicken out again?”

“Franky, yes.”

“It’s true that I’d rather kill a man. Or maybe I just want to kill you.”

“Still harboring some animosity, then?”

“I don’t think so,” Will says. “Mostly it just sounds like fun.”

Inside, the bar is like a hundred other bars across the country with sturdy scuffed up furniture, poor lighting, and an oppressive swarm of other humans at every turn. Will remembers - like he does every time he steps foot in a bar - why he doesn’t step foot in bars.

He tries to concentrate on the task at hand. You’re supposed to go to the bar itself for this kind of thing, aren’t you? Hanging off the stools are a young man in tight shorts, a middle-aged one in a cowboy hat, and a 40-ish one who is just right. It’s the suit that does it - not as outlandishly patterned as Hannibal’s, but it sticks out like an elegant thumb in the crowd of T-shirts and jeans. Will slips into the stool next to him and leans over the bar to order.

“Not from around here?” the suit asks.

Will frowns. “Really? You got all that from ‘Can I get a pinot noir?’ Jeez, I never thought I had that much of an accent.”

The suit laughs. “The order gave you away,” he admits. “This is more of a Bud and whiskey crowd.”

“So what’re you? Bud or whiskey?”

He holds up a delicate martini glass with something blue sloshing around. “Before you judge me - it’s fucking delicious. Wanna sip?”

Will takes the glass from him, making sure to brush his fingers in the process. It’s sweet and berryish and, indeed, delicious. Will’s head swims a little. “That’s, uh, strong.”

“Yeah well, that’s the idea, isn’t it?” The suit likes him. He’s smiling a lot, has shifted his body language to focus on Will and mirror his posture.

When Will’s wine arrives it looks black and tastes like a thousand blurry Baltimore dinners. “So what’s with the get up?” Will asks, gesturing at the suit’s suit and leering a little bit. “Don’t get me wrong, it looks good on you. Just doesn’t seem like our fellow patrons got the memo about the dress code.”

“It’s just for work, unfortunately,” he says. “Not a very glamorous reason.”

“You mean you’re not double-oh seven?”

“Well if I told you I’d have to kill you, wouldn’t I?”

Will laughs obligingly, feeling like a big game hunter in the bush.

“I’m a real estate agent, and I figure I might as well dress up a little for clients so they get the idea I know what the fuck I’m doing. And I gotta say, it really does class up even the shittiest little tract home. I also like to think a suit symbolically says to clients that if I take care of my appearance, I’ll take care of them too.”

“And a psychologist too?”

He laughs, holding out his hand. “Only in my spare time. My name’s Scott, by the way.”

Will grins. “No kidding. I’m John.”

Scott indicates the bandage on Will’s cheek. “So now that we’re on a first name basis, can I ask you about the, uh . . . ?”

Will touches the gauze and rolls his eyes. “It’s a cliché, but I really did cut myself shaving. There was this work function last week and I had the bright idea to try out a straight razor so I could look extra stylish. Everyone’s seen me in my ‘I’m dressed up’ outfit a thousand times and I wanted to stand out. I, uh, didn’t count on standing out quite _this_ much, though . . . ”

“I think you look all right, all things considered,” Scott says, eyeing Will unsubtly. “You new to the area or . . . ?”

“Just passing through.”

Scott had been born in Colorado and moved to Santa Fe for college. He’d majored in history and then switched to business and had still had no idea what to do with his life by the time he’d graduated. He has wavy black hair and a bright smile. Will lets himself enjoy the attention. They talk mild politics and debate whether or not ‘Hamilton’ is worth the hype as a pretext for interaction. Will’s glass is halfway gone when he spots movement by the door: Hannibal in a black buttoned shirt and trousers, dressed to kill in more ways than one. It’s insane how the sight of him sends a jolt through Will’s nervous system. Anticipation blooms and dovetails his lust.

Hannibal doesn’t acknowledge Will at all. He orders a beer at the bar and takes it to an empty table near the bathroom. 

“So I gotta address the elephant in the room,” Scott says, startling Will from his reverie.

“The elephant?”

Scott takes Will’s left hand and strokes the warmed metal around his finger. “I don’t know how I feel about flirting in bars with married men.”

Will feigns shock. “Is that what we’re doing? You cad.”

Scott turns Will’s hand over and strokes his palm. Light and tantalizing.

“I’m separated. Not legally, but . . . well, let’s just say I’m pretty sure she’s not expecting me back.”

“Ah. That kind of married. Listen, I’m not usually this vulgar on the first date, but have you ever, well . . . ?”

“Have I ever had sex with a man? Sort of. Yes, I guess.”

Scott snorts. “Sounds memorable.”

Will allows himself a glance in the direction of the bathroom and finds Hannibal watching avidly from his table. Will coughs into his arm and sees Hannibal rise and head for the bathroom before he turns his attention back to Scott. An influx of light in Will’s periphery means the bathroom door has opened again, and when Will looks Hannibal is draining his glass and slapping a bill on his table.

Will turns back to Scott. “I think the bathroom’s open. You in the mood to make some memories right now?”

“I think I could be persuaded.”

Will makes sure to enter the bathroom first under the pretense of checking the stalls. He locks the door and herds Scott against a tiled wall for a kiss. Scott hums approvingly into it, hands meandering before they settle on Will’s ass. Will leans back a bit and pushes Scott into the wall again when he tries to follow. Will’s hands graze down Scott’s shirt to his fly and unzip it and slip inside.

“You said you wanted persuasion.”

Scott’s already half-hard cock thickens in Will’s grip. “You’re definitely persuasive. Definitely.” He pulls Will into another kiss.

Will repositions them so Scott doesn’t have a view of the mirror or the stalls it reflects. He lets the kiss get messy and sucks on Scott’s exploratory tongue. Will mumbles against Scott’s mouth, “Let me suck you off.”

“Hell yeah,” Scott pants.

Will steps back, mildly horrified that he doesn’t even hesitate before grabbing Scott’s shoulders and slamming his head hard against the wall. Scott looks around wildly, seeming more bewildered than injured.

A dark shadow sweeps through the white fluorescent bathroom - Hannibal with a belt. Will seizes Scott’s shoulders again to move him away from the wall and Hannibal loops the belt around his neck and squeezes ruthlessly. Leather biting visibly into Scott’s neck and turning him quickly red.

Will doesn’t look at Scott’s eyes; it’s not about that. He does reach out to trace the tension there - Scott’s straining neck and Hannibal’s strength through the belt. Both are so alive.

Hannibal bats Will’s hands away. “You’ve had your turn.”

A chill runs up Will’s spine at the quiet authority Hannibal conveys with his tone. He feels knocked off balance and leans against the wall and watches it happen. Mostly he watches Hannibal’s face and the rare enticing sight of his physicality in action.

Scott’s body slumps like an afterthought, and Hannibal tosses it aside like it’s offended him before stalking closer to Will. He fists one hand in Will’s hair and holds him unyieldingly against the wall with the other. 

“Exactly how far were you prepared to go with this ruse, Will?” Hannibal is still panting with effort.

Will licks his lips, feeling a little reckless from that glass of wine. “You’re asking if I was really gonna blow him. I dunno - who can say what might’ve happened if you hadn’t been waiting in the wings?”

Hannibal’s expression freezes, and Will takes delight in the thread of jealousy there. Will feels as powerful as he had when he’d been squeezing Hannibal’s windpipe shut.

An echoing groan floats up from the floor. Will kicks Scott in the head, but it doesn’t do the trick. He shakes Hannibal off and retrieves an oversized decorative horseshoe from above the sink. He kneels and strikes Scott with it over and over and over and bloodier and slicker until his pulse is gone and there’s red leaking in criss-crosses through the floor tiles.

Will stands and is met with an unholy vision in the bathroom mirror: his hands look like they’ve been dipped in red wax and his face is misted with blood. Not black, but Tarantino red and vibrant as a living thing under fluorescent bulbs. There’s some in his hair.

Hannibal appears behind him with a light in his eyes that can only be described as feral. He grins and his usually hidden teeth seem as exaggerated as a vampire’s - it’s in the canines, in the ways that Hannibal has honed and sharpened them, and in the kind of meat he’s ripped apart with them.

Will meets his eyes in the mirror. “Blood arouses you,” he says.

Hannibal’s fingers swipe through the place where it’s collected at Will’s wrist, then drag fingerprints up Will’s chin to his lips. Will licks it up.

Hannibal bites into the nape of Will’s neck and tells him, “Suck me, instead.”

Hearing Hannibal’s reasonable voice wrap around a phrase like that effectively obliterates Will’s higher brain function. Hannibal pushes Will to his knees before Will can even think about it. He fumbles with Hannibal’s pants and noses at the shape of him through his underwear before pushing them down. Will’s senses are hijacked by scent and Hannibal’s hunger and his own hammering heart.

Hannibal guides his cock to paint precome obscenely across Will’s mouth. Will tongues at the head - saltiness to mingle with the taste of blood that’s omnipresent - before opening his mouth and taking him in.

Hannibal’s grip in Will’s hair is becoming familiar. The pain of it is focusing, and the way it conveys Hannibal’s desire for him as much as his disregard for him is potent. Will strokes Hannibal with his mouth unhurriedly, wondering if Hannibal is human enough to get as sexually frustrated as the next person. Apparently so, because Hannibal’s static grip starts to twist, directing Will’s head forward and back a little faster and it’s a relief to give himself over to being used for this. Maybe that would always be the nature of their relationship.

There are voices and knocks at the locked bathroom door but Will barely hears them. He’s breathing loudly through his nose and is too flooded with the taste of Hannibal’s arousal and the throb of flesh against his tongue. Will sucks and Hannibal mutters something unintelligible. He’s practically fucking Will’s mouth now and it makes Will giddy with power. Will’s eyes water. He encircles the base of Hannibal’s cock with his fist and soon there is heat pulsing into the back of Will’s throat which he swallows reflexively.

Hannibal falls back against the opposite wall. Will sits on the floor to relieve his aching knees and takes stock of the bathroom - blood-smeared all over with a conspicuous body by the sinks. Will knows they should clean up at least a little, but he also likes the idea of leaving the mess in their wake. It feels right. Descriptive of their rawness, somehow. When Will looks back to Hannibal his eyes are closed and a smile plays at his lips. 

When they go they leave the bathroom undisturbed.


	6. Folie à Deux

Will hasn’t been to California, unless you count LAX. He’s never really bought into the romanticism of going west and seeking fame and fortune there. The magic of Hollywood had always felt slimy and superficial to him. The scenery, however, is a vast improvement over the southwest. Arizona and Nevada are beautiful in their way, but the voids of uninterrupted rock and dust there make him nervous. They’d given Las Vegas a wide berth as they’d headed north, avoiding practically every West Coast town Will knows the name of.

Once the ocean comes into view Will can feel the rightness of their arrival here. The highway along the coastline traverses a range of rocky cliffs garnished with yellow grass and occasional shrubbery, a tidy visual parallel to the Maryland cliffs they had - in the Dragon’s terminology - _become_ at. Will hopes Dolarhyde had known the service he’d done them, hopes he’d realized what a mighty work he had wrought after all.

They pull into the sandy parking lot of a scenic overlook. There’s a handful of weathered picnic tables, a collage of signs with everything from food truck dates to litter warnings, and two guys fishing on the beach far below them. The sun’s rays are warm, but a cool salty breeze reminds them it’s not quite April yet. Two little girls loiter on the edge of the cliff and giggle to each other, long hair whipping in the wind and catching the morning light. Mom sits on the hood of a Jeep in the parking lot talking on the phone.

Hannibal gets out of Scott’s Passat and stretches luxuriantly. Much of their history has been in bleaker, colder weather, and the sight of Hannibal so carefree in the sunshine is a little jarring. Hannibal is still wearing the black buttoned shirt from the night they’d killed Scott. It’s bloody as hell, but you’d never know it. Will had taken Scott’s slacks and finally ditched the skin-tight pants he’d been stuck with before. He pairs them with a worn-in white Henley and imagines that together they strike a garish yin-yang against the horizon. 

“Don’t get any ideas, Will,” Hannibal warns as they reach the edge of the cliff.

It’s a long way down, and Will gets dizzy just from looking. He studies the blue gradient of sea and sky instead. “I don’t think we should leave the country. At least not yet. Like you said before, it’s expected. I think we should at least wait ‘til things cool down some.”

“Agreed. Although that brings us to the question of income. We do have to eat, and unfortunately my usual method of procuring free meals might draw some attention in a town this small.”

“And here I assumed you had some top secret Cayman bank accounts that nobody knows about.”

“I do, but I also do not know how many of my accounts have been discovered in the years since my incarceration. Alana is no fool, and neither is Jack Crawford. And they’ve had ample time to lay their traps for me.” The muted crash of waves below them draws Hannibal’s attention. “Perhaps we might open a restaurant. You could fish.”

That feels right, too. And a legal way to channel their hobbies for the time being. “Avoiding a paper trail is tricky, although I suppose I don’t have to tell you that.”

“A new business in any of these small towns is going to draw attention . . . ”

“But on the other hand, going to a city will just mean more red tape and scrutiny.”

A car door slams, followed by two more. A troupe of surfers pile out of a hybrid car and head down the winding path to the beach with their boards. The little girls are collected by their mother for a juice box break at a picnic table. Will remembers the sign.

“With a food truck,” he says, “asking for cash only wouldn’t raise eyebrows. And it’s mobile, so we could drive up and down the coast. Handy for impromptu car chases too.”

“Not as handy as a motorbike,” Hannibal says, wrinkling his nose a little. “A food truck?

Will laughs. “If you’ll recall, Dr. Lecter, it was your demand for luxury and all the truffles that money could buy that got you caught the first time.”

“Only because I wanted you to catch me.”

The overlook is getting crowded as the sun climbs higher so they move on. Will drives them into what passes for downtown in Mendocino where they find a pub in a quaint shingled building for lunch. The town is waking up lazily even as noon approaches, little pockets of traffic making their way past the pub but never lasting too long. A lot of Jeeps and compacts, but while they’re waiting for the check a red high-top van parks across the street. 

Hannibal looks to Will. “Will that do?” He’s already warming to the idea of murdering someone for their ride again, never mind any distaste he might have for the end result.

Will is warming to it, too. Mainly to the light in Hannibal’s eyes. He leaves a twenty on the table and they leave.

They tail the red van for the next couple of hours. It’s driven by a middle aged man who seems to be some kind of meter reader, but the van isn’t a company vehicle. He leads Will and Hannibal to every nook and cranny of the town and far beyond - much of the population is apparently scattered in the wilderness. Everything from sleek mini mansions to rusty trailers to isolated little neighborhoods with backyards of redwood or untamed ocean.

The sun’s descent is shrouded by a wall of old trees. They’re waiting for the man and his van to return from a gravel driveway leading into the forest.

“Have you thought about how we will incapacitate him?” Hannibal asks.

“Not really. I guess I thought you might want to choose, this time. He might be the last one for awhile.” Maybe.

Hannibal shrugs. “I’ve had years to discover what I enjoy, and the pleasure I take in it can become diminished with repetition. Witnessing your own evolution, on the other hand, has only renewed the thrill of the hunt.”

“You’re always so careful to avoid being explicit.”

“Old habits die hard.”

Meandering jazz plays on the radio, a vibraphone repeating the same phrases to infinity. Eventually Will speaks again: “When I was growing up we’d tell ghost stories around the campfire about the local jazzy boogeyman. The Axeman fit right into the morbid undercurrent of New Orleans, and he was larger than life when I was a kid. Later I studied him at the Academy - I even taught him. He wasn’t so glamorous, then. His crimes weren’t just brutal, they were terrorizing. Which tends to happen when you’re a bonafide axe murderer.”

“Sounds messy,” Hannibal says, starting to smile.

Will echoes it. “I thought you might like that.”

The van emerges from the gloom of the forest and continues up the main road. Will follows at a distance. They trail it through another small town where Hannibal makes some purchases at a hardware store. 

The sky is blushing pink when the van disappears up another long driveway into the woods. Will parks the Passat conspicuously on the side of the road and puts the flashers on. When their target returns Will doesn’t even have to wave him down. The little red van stops behind Will and the driver rushes out. He’s a tall man with a significant beard and is wider with muscle than Will remembers noticing during their reconnaissance.

Apparently Hannibal has taken notice of the threat he poses, too, because he springs from the redwoods ahead of schedule and swings an axe directly into the man’s head. The man’s reaction is delayed - shock to anger to horror at the pain of the blow. 

“Not here,” Hannibal says. “Help me bring him inside.”

The man is massively heavy but they manage to drag his dazed body into the back of his van. Hannibal produces a flashlight and props it in the corner to beam up at the ceiling. It casts crazy shadows over metal walls and mysterious meter-reading equipment.

Hannibal swings his axe again and this time the impact releases a fountain of blood. Will joins in, mesmerized by the arcs of red that burst forth and the graceful patterns they paint on the walls. Whenever it splashes Will’s skin it’s warm.

By the end of it blood has collected at the hollow of Hannibal’s throat. His face is so soaked with it that the untouched skin under one eye seems to glow in the dingy light. The bearded man is an unidentifiable mess on the floor between them.

Hannibal steps over the body to get to Will. When he kisses him it smears blood all over Will’s face. Hannibal teases Will’s mouth open with a burst of the now familiar flavor of blood. Will tests the sharpness of Hannibal’s teeth with his tongue, feeling hot all over from exertion and the Pavlovian response he’s developing to that taste.

Hannibal has Will against the side of the van, staining Will’s clothes and skin heedlessly. “I’ve never had this,” he says under his breath, hyper-focused on the blood and the art he’s sculpting with it over Will’s chest, neck, face. 

“What?”

Hannibal follows fingers with his mouth to reveal Will’s skin again. He kisses Will’s jaw and the impending scar on Will’s cheek before returning to his mouth with fresh blood. In the heat of their shared breath he mutters, “Sharing the hunt with you is not only a pleasure. To be so unguarded - it’s an immeasurable relief.”

It takes Will a minute to understand him. “You waltzed into my life and tugged at the right strings until I crumbed the way you wanted me to. You know that, right?” Will is drawn back to Hannibal’s mouth because it’s parted and red with blood and kissing. Will leans in and makes it redder. “Thank you for doing that.”

Hannibal presses his body against Will’s while they kiss, grinding into him demandingly and solidifying Will’s erection. Will tangles slippery fingers into his hair and Hannibal practically growls.

Will pushes Hannibal back and in a flurry of motion he almost trips over the body. Will steadies him for a minute, but then they both tumble painfully onto the floor of the van where Will is reminded of his fractured ribs.

He doesn’t think about it for long, however, because Hannibal wastes no time in rolling on top of Will. Heavy and good and enhanced by the discomfort of being pressed into a metal floor. Hannibal twists Will’s arms above his head, diving in to suck at his neck and prompting Will to arc his hips up until they stumble into a rhythm of long languid undulations.

It feels good to be at Hannibal’s mercy in yet another way - the danger of it is heady - but it doesn’t fit right now. Will wants more than that, wants more of _Hannibal_ than only that. Wants his own design. Will struggles against Hannibal’s grip but Hannibal only crushes his wrists together tighter.

“Let me go.”

“No.”

“I want to touch you.”

“Not yet, Will.”

“I want to _fuck_ you.”

It catches Hannibal off guard exactly like Will had hoped it would - he gets his hands free and flips them. Hannibal stares up at him from the floor, gorgeously dazed with eyes that swim amid the eerie flashlight shadows. He reaches for Will but Will sits back, retreating. Hannibal follows, and they kiss disjointedly as they undress each other.

Their clothes get piled on the floor to form a makeshift cushion, not that it’ll afford much comfort. It isn’t until they’re naked on a pile of bloody clothes that it occurs to Will this won’t be as straightforward as the kind of sex he’s used to.

“Won’t it hurt?” Will asks.

“Of course it will. And it will feel good too.”

“Yeah,” Will says, heart racing now, “that sounds like our M.O.”

Hannibal takes Will’s hand and sucks his longest finger. He looks like an absolute monster, covered in blood and shadow with eyes boring into Will’s with paranormal luminance. Will is painfully hard and he’s only further aroused by the sight of Hannibal dragging Will’s hand between his legs. Will presses the finger in and watches Hannibal’s entire demeanor change - he closes his eyes, breath slowing and evening out. Certainly Hannibal is skilled at tolerating pain, and all of Will’s memories of that make him shiver. The control Will feels over him is intoxicating.

“Another,” Hannibal says, so quietly that Will doesn’t hear it at first. 

“Really?” He feels unbelievably tight.

Will adds another finger. After working in and out a couple of times to stretch him he experiments with angles. The first few don’t seem to make much difference but then Hannibal’s hand is vicelike on Will’s good shoulder and he’s shuddering and grinding down into it. Will keeps fucking him there for awhile. Then he pulls out to spit into his hand and gather some of his own precome before returning with three fingers, which Hannibal tenses beautifully at. Will leans over to kiss him and Hannibal responds ravenously - clawing at Will’s back and probably drawing additional blood to mingle with the van driver’s and suddenly Will can’t wait any longer.

“Turn around,” Will says. 

There is no hesitation from Hannibal - he repositions himself on his hands and knees and Will spits into his hand again to coat his cock with it. He sinks into Hannibal, slowly but without stopping, until he’s fully engulfed and dizzy with sensation. Hannibal’s quick breaths overlap Will’s and echo harshly. Will tries a tentative thrust that Hannibal gasps at. Tries it deeper and Hannibal grabs uselessly at the smooth wall to brace himself. Will pushes between Hannibal’s shoulders until his chest is flat to the floor, leaving a bloody brand of his own on Hannibal’s back. 

Will fucks him harder and Hannibal’s head whips to the side, just a profile of closed eyes and invitingly parted lips in the flickering light as Will’s movements rock the van. Hannibal starts to thrust back against him, trying to egg him on but Will holds his hips still. Will can feel it when Hannibal gives up, laying there bonelessly, disarmed, delicious. Will knows he’ll come soon and feels compelled to rub as much blood as possible into Hannibal’s back and shoulders and wrecked hair. Will touches Hannibal’s panting mouth and the softness of his seeking tongue on Will’s fingers puts him over the edge. Will thrusts rapidly through it, pulls out with a groan and falls onto his back on the floor.

Hannibal’s eyes are closed, but he reaches a blood-sticky hand out to rest on Will’s heaving chest.

*

The van is parked at a closed beach. The few stragglers left are making their way unhurriedly back to their cars while gulls and sanderlings encroach to inspect the areas they’ve vacated for scraps. There aren’t any cliffs this far south; just bendy palm trees and a lushness to the vegetation that Will relishes after what has felt like an interminable winter. The sun is dropping slowly closer to the Pacific to glint colorfully off the crests of the waves. 

Will sits about halfway between the dunes and the water and breathes. Operating a food truck, while convenient for their purposes, is much more tiring than Will remembers from his past employment at fast food joints in his youth. Or maybe he’s just getting old. Hannibal seems endlessly energized by the work, despite having to occasionally deal with customers when Will gets busy. 

A savory smell wafts from the van to mingle with cool ocean air. Hannibal doesn’t ever cut corners when it comes to food preparation, but Will can tell from smell alone that he’s making something especially good for them tonight. The food truck’s menu isn’t fixed, although it does tend to revolve around fish and whatever they can find at farmers markets. Will catches as much as possible, but he doesn’t come close to meeting demand all on his own. He does notice that Hannibal will save the freshest fish for the customers who are particularly courteous. Sometimes Will can recognize elements of dishes Hannibal had made for him in Baltimore.

The newspapers never mention them and the radio is silent. Obituaries and missing persons fliers are nowhere to be found, but Will feels deader to his old life than he’d be if he’d actually died. And it’s a relief.

Will doesn’t hear Hannibal’s approach across the expanse of sand that separates them. He delivers two plates to the blanket in front of Will and joins him on the ground. It is distinctly not one of their popular fish tacos.

Will takes a bite and closes his eyes with pleasure at the smokiness of the meat. “Very nostalgic, but I’d like to avoid adding this kind of fare to the menu.”

Hannibal is unmoved. “Waste not, want not.”

“Maybe we should’ve gone with ‘Mr. Lovett’s Tacos’ after all.”

Hannibal only sighs and continues eating.

Will can’t be too mad at him. The man who had so selflessly provided their filet hadn’t just been a difficult customer. He’d maligned the quality of the food itself, loudly, and made the kind of scene that drew attention. Some of the other customers had taken pictures and videos and Will still wasn’t sure he’d tracked them all down. 

The sun has deepened to red by the time they finish eating. The sky is a mosaic of pinks broken up by splotchy yellow clouds. Soon it plops into the sea and they are left with nightfall and the soundtrack of low tide.

“Is this enough for you?” Will asks.

Hannibal contemplates the ocean, and it sloshes forward and recedes with a hiss many times before he answers. “Truthfully? I cannot say. For now, maybe. But where else would I go?”

“Oh I dunno. I guess I’ve always assumed you have no shortage of residences secreted around the globe. Not to mention your long lost ancestral home . . . ”

“I should rephrase,” Hannibal says. “Where else would I want to go?”

They pack up the plates and the blanket and drive away into a dark and balmy night. The constant travel doesn’t wear on Will the same way it had before when everything had felt so tenuous and uncertain. When they’d first clambered out of the opposite ocean and Will hadn’t known what he wanted.

Will lets his arm loll out the window to surf the fragrant air. Their wounds have healed, for the most part, and he breathes easily.

“How many people do you think we’ve killed?” Will asks, sleepy now that the sun is gone and they’ve eaten. “Since the Dragon.”

“I don’t keep track,” Hannibal says. “Have you begun to feel guilty yet?” 

“For what?”

“Take your pick.”

Will considers it. The idea of guilt is too exhausting to entertain. “I don’t feel guilty. For now, at least.”

*


End file.
